With regard to the iron ore industry it is stated:

The principal iron fields of Russia are in the south-the Krivoi Rog supplying 75 per cent.-and in the Urals. The Krivoi Rog district mined about 1,000,000 tons of ore per annum prior to the war, employing 23,000 hands. The following extracts from the Frankfurter Zeitung, Nov. 7, 1917, refer to iron works in the Krivoi Rog:

At the Gdantsevski Works only 400 workmen remained.

The Nikopol Mariupol Works, which had a normal monthly output of 500,000 poods, produced only 17,000 poods during April, 1918, and in May, 1918, work stopped entirely.

At the Donetz-Yurievska work has been at a standstill since May, 1918.

At Bryansk only 2,500 workmen remain out of 6,000, the normal number.

In spite of the terrible famine, the evidence in these documents goes to show that there was plenty of food in Russia, but that it was not available for the population because of the complete breakdown in transport and of the distrust between town and country, which left the peasants an abundance of food while the factory workers starved.

PUTILOV REVOLT

The following report, dated March 21, 1919, relates to the revolt of the workmen of the Putilov factory against Lenin:

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Strikes at the Putilov and other factories have been the main events of interest during the last week. The outbreak was economic rather than political. The cry for "bread " gave place to a new cry, Down with Lenin!" Both the strikes and the rising were due in part to the instigation of the Social Revolutionary Party. In the various workshops Bolshevism longer keeps its hold, though a few factory committees deavor to keep it alive. These committees are made up mainly of Communists, who maintain their power by manipulating the elections, and will even introduce total strangers in order to maintain a majority; while they terrorize the workmen and compel them to vote for the Soviet candidates. The workmen now re

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gard the factory committees as Soviet spies, and believe that their words are passed on by agents, who claim to be Social Revolutionaries, and who are sent to the works in order to report on the so-called "crime" of political opposition. It is probable for this reason that the Social Revolutionaries had less to do with the rising than had the actual workmen, though the Bolsheviki would not admit this.

On March 10 a mass meeting was held at the Putilov Works; 10,000 men were present, and a resolution was passed, with only twenty-two dissentients, all of whom were complete strangers unconnected with the works. The following extracts show the tenor of the resolution:

We, the workmen of the Putilov Works Wharf, declare before the laboring classes of Russia and the world that the Bolshevist Government has betrayed the high ideals of the October revolution, and thus betrayed and deceived the workmen and peasants of Russia; that the Bolshevist Government acting as formerly in our names, is not the authority of the proletariat and peasants, but an authority and dictatorship of a central committee of the Bolshevist Party, self-governing with the aid of extraordinary commissions, Communists, and police.

"We protest against the compulsion of workmen to remain at factories and works, and the attempt to deprive them all of elementary rights, freedom of the press, speech, meetings, inviolability of persons, &c.

once arrested. Various promises were made, and money, in the shape of "Kerensky" notes, was distributed by the Bolsheviki, but the workmen refused to be pacified, and incited their comrades to strike. On March 15 the Baltic, Skorohod, and tramway works came out on strike. The situation was so serious that Lenin came from Moscow and attempted to pacify the workmen by speeches and promises of an extra bread ration. also promised that passenger traffic between Petrograd and Moscow should be suspended for four weeks, in order that the transport of supplies might be facilitated.

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His proposals were refused, and the workmen demanded his resignation. Zinoviev and Lunacharsky, the only two Kommissars who dared to address the workmen, had no better success. Zinoviev was greeted with cries of "Down with that Jew!" and was compelled to escape. Lunacharsky found it almost impossible to obtain a hearing, and eventually promised that the Bolsheviki would resign if the majority desired their resignation. The following couplet was placarded upon the walls of Petrograd:

"Down with Lenin and horseflesh,
Give us the Czar and pork!"'

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A demand was made by the delegates of the Putilov works that the resolution of March 10 should be published in the Northern Commune, but this was refused by the Kommissars of the Interior. On March 16 Torin incited Bolshevists to kill the Social Revolutionaries, and Zinoviev brought into Petrograd number of sailors and soldiers of the Red Army. The force was composed of foreigners, mainly Letts and Germans. During the next two days 300 arrests took place in the workshops, and suspected ringleaders and Social Revolutionaries were shot wholesale. Though order has been partially restored, and many workmen have been driven to work by means of threats, they are still incensed against the Bolshiviki, and demand the freedom of the press in order to voice their grievances.

ULTIMATE RESULTS

A British subject who left Petrograd in November, 1918, stated that Russian industry was dead, and that for the time being the Russian industrial workman as a class had ceased to exist. He said: It is an extremely curious feature of the Russian revolution that a movement which has proclaimed itself as social and democratic has achieved in the first instance total destruction of those social groups on which a social democratic organization is mainly based-the class of the industrial workmen. All factories, all the important ones. with a few exceptions

of those who are still engaged on munition work, are stopped, and the industrial workman had either to return to the village with which he had no more ties in common or to enlist in the Red Army. The younger generation of the workmen, men of 19 to 26 years, have, to a great extent, chosen the second alternative, and it is they who form the Bolshivist nucleus of the Red Army.

In the same month Colonel Kimens, Acting British Vice Consul at Petrograd, reported that the expropriation of land had led to a very considerable decrease of crops; the nationalization of factories to a standstill of industry, the seizure of the banks to a complete cessation of money circulation, and the nationalization of trade to a deadlock in that branch of the economic life of the country, so that nothing was being produced.

How these and kindred measures have been carried out, and their consequences, are described in a statement made to the British Foreign Office by two British subjects who left Petrograd on Jan. 17, 1919. One of them was manager of a big firm in that city, and was in prison for three and a half months. They stated that in the villages poverty committees, composed of peasants without land and of hooligans returned from the towns, had been set against the peasant proprietor. Local Government had been handed over to these poverty committees, and they took from the peasant proprietor his produce, implements, and live stock, retaining what they needed themselves and forwarding the mainder to the towns. The peasant will not give grain to the Bolsheviki because he hates them, and hopes by this means to destroy them eventually. He is armed and united. It is for this reason that armed requisitioning companies were sent out everywhere from Petrograd and Moscow to help the poverty committees to take the grain from the peasant, and every day all over Russia such fights for grain are fought to a finish till either the peasants or the requisitioning party are wiped out. The peasant proprietors, who probably will one day be the strongest party in the future Russia, are anti-Bolshivist to a man.

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The position of the workmen is no better. At first the eight-hour day with

high minimum wages greatly pleased them, but as time went on they found that, owing to the increased cost of living, they were little, if any, better off. Their wages were increased, but a vicious circle was soon set up on which their wage increases were utterly unable to keep up with the high cost of living. Reduction of output further increased the cost. At the Petrograd Wagon Works the pre-Bolshevist cost of passenger cars was 16,000 to 17,000 rubles; it is now 100,000 to 120,000. At Government works, where the Bolsheviki would be most likely to expect support, intense dissatisfaction exists. official warning was issued to the workmen of the Putilov works through the official newspaper stating that during a period of several weeks fires, explosions, and breakdowns had regularly occurred, which could only be put down to traitors to the cause, who, when caught, would be shot.

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PLIGHT OF THE BOURGEOISIE As to the unhappy bourgeoisie, the situation in which they find themselves defies all description:

All who employ labor down to a servant girl, or an errand boy, or any one whose wants are provided for ahead-that is, all who do not live from hand to mouth-are considered under Bolshevism as bourgeoisie. All newspapers except the Bolshevist ones have been closed, and their plant and property confiscated. New decrees by the dozen are printed daily in the press, no other notification being given. Nonobservance of any decree means confiscation of property. All Government securities have been annulled and all others confiscated. Safe deposits have been opened, and all gold and silver articles confiscated. All plants and factories have been nationalized, as also the cinemas and theatres. This nationalization or municipalization means to the unhappy owner confiscation, since no payment is ever made. Payments by the banks from current or deposit accounts have been stopped. It is forbidden to sell furniture or to move it from one house to another without permission. Persons living in houses containing more rooms than they have members of their families have poor families billeted in the other rooms, the furniture in these rooms remaining for the use of the families billeted there.

Hundreds of houses have been requisitioned for official or semi-official use, and thousands of unhappy residents have been

turned out on the streets at an hour's notice with permission to take with them only the clothes they stood in, together with one change of linen. Houses are controlled by a poverty committee, composed of the poorest residents of the house. These committees have the right to take and distribute among themselves from the occupiers of the flats all furniture they consider in excess. They also act as Bolshevist agents, giving information as to movements. A special tax was levied on all house property amounting practically to the full value of the same. Failure to pay in fourteen days resulted in municipalization of property.

All owners and managers of works, offices, and shops, as well as members of the leisured class, have been called up for compulsory labor; first, for the burial of cholera and typhus victims, and later for cleaning the streets, &c. All goods lying at the Custom House warehouses have been seized, and first mortgaged to the Government Bank for 100,000,000 rubles. Any fortunate owner of these goods, which were not finally confiscated, had the possibility of obtaining them on payment of the mortgage. All furniture and furs stored away have been confiscated. All hotels, restaurants, provision shops, and most other shops, are now closed after having had their stocks and inventories confiscated.

Just before we left a new tax was brought out, the extraordinary Revolutionary Tax. In the Government newspapers there were printed daily lists of people, street by street, district by district, with the amount they must pay into the Government Bank within fourteen days on pain of confiscation of all property. The amounts, I noticed, ranged from 2,000 to 15,000,000 rubles. It is impossible to imagine how these sums can be paid.

These witnesses assert that the soldiers of the Red Army are no more satisfied than the peasants and workmen, and that the only troops the Bolsheviki can trust are the Lettish, Chinese, and a few battalions of sailors. They give them 250 rubles a month, all found, together with presents of gold watches and chains requisitioned from the bourgeoisie. Rifles are only given to newly conscripted troops at the front. For any military offense there is only one punishment death. Executions are done mostly by the Chinese. If a regiment retreats against orders, machine guns are turned on them, and if the Kommissar of the regiment cannot thus hold his men he is shot. "All the soldiers I

spoke to even those acting as our guards at the prison-cursed their fate at being compelled to serve, the only alternative being death from hunger or execution as deserters. Nearly all openly expressed the hope that the British would soon come and put an end to it all."

13,800 EXECUTIONS

Since the outbreak of the Red Terror which followed the murder of Commissioner Uritsky and the attempt to assassinate Lenin, in the Summer of 1918, the mention of atrocities is less frequent in these statements, but this is due to the state of terrorism which has been established. The whole population, says Mr. Alston, who represents the British Foreign Office at Vladivostok, with the exception of the Bolsheviki, is terrorized almost to a point of physical paralysis and imbecility. Altogether the number of people known to have been murdered is about 13,800. This number is probably not exhaustive, and is based only on the admission of the Bolsheviki themselves. The following extracts are typical of the brutal nature of these executions, the first being by a British subject who left Moscow in December, 1918:

The number of people who have been coldly done to death in Moscow is enormous. Many thousands have been shot, but lately those condemned to death were hanged instead, and that in the most brutal manner. They were taken out in batches in the early hours of the morning to a place on the outskirts of the town, stripped of their shirts, and then hanged one by one by being drawn up at the end of a rope until their feet were a few inches from the ground, and then left to die. The work was done by Mongolian soldiers. Shooting was too noisy and not sure enough. Men have crawled away after a volley, and others have been buried while still alive. I was told in Stockholm by one of the representatives of the Esthonian Government that 150 Russian officers who were taken prisoner at Pskov by the Red Guards were given over to the Mongolian soldiers, who sawed them to pieces.

A British subject who left Moscow in January supplies the following statement:

Executions still continue in the prisons, though the ordinary people do not hear

about them. Often during the executions a regimental band plays lively tunes. The following account of an execution was given to Mr. A. by a member of one of the bands. On one occasion he was playing in the band, and as usual all the people to be executed were brought to the edge of the grave. Their hands and feet were tied together so that they would fall forward into the grave. They were then shot through the neck by Lettish soldiers. When the last man had been shot the grave was closed up, and on this particular occasion the band man saw the grave moving. Not being able to stand the sight of it he fainted, whereupon the Bolsheviki seized him, saying that he was in sympathy with the prisonThey were on the point of killing him, but other members of the band explained that he was really ill, and he was then let off. Among the prisoners shot on that occasion was a priest, who asked permission to say a prayer before being shot, to which the Bolsheviki replied laconically, "Ne nado' (it is not necessary).

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BLOOD BATH AT WALK

An account of the unspeakable deeds done in Esthonia is given on Page 495 of this issue of CURRENT HISTORY. A what supplementary report recounts happened in the town of Walk, where hundreds of persons were massacred. The unfortunates, who belonged to different classes of society, were arrested on all sorts of pretexts, kept prisoner a few days, and then, in groups of twenty to thirty, led out of the town to the place of execution, where graves were already prepared for them. Every night twenty to thirty persons were executed without examination or trial. fore being shot the victims were tortured in every possible way. All the bodies bore marks of many bayonet thrusts as well as gun wounds. The skulls were shattered and the bones broken.

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An Esthonian soldier was taken prisoner, and was to be executed along with many others. The Bolshevist bullets, which killed so many of his comrades, did not hit him, and he succeeded in escaping from the common burial place. He describes this terrible blood-bath as follows:

They took our caps, coats, and cloaks. Thirty-five armed Bolsheviki surrounded us in order to prevent any attempt at escape. Our hands were bound behind our backs. Besides this we were fastened

in couples, and then each pair joined by a long rope, so that we marched all attached to the one rope. Thus we were led to death. As I protested against this barbaric treatment, the Bolshevist officer struck me twice on the head with a riding whip and said: Shooting is too good for you; your eyes ought to be put out before death." At the word of command the Bolsheviki fired a volley. The bound group fell to earth. I also was pulled down by the others, though I had not been hit. The Bolsheviki fired four rounds on the fallen. Fortunately I again was missed. Then the executioners fell upon us like wild animals to rob us. Any one who still moved was finally killed by bayonets or blows from the butt ends of rifles.

In a dispatch dated March 3 the British Consul at Ekaterinburg gives the results of an investigation at Perm after its capture by the Siberian Army. It was established that several thousand persons had been shot or drowned. "Commissaries consisted of unintellectual laborers from 20 to 30 years old, who condemned people to death without making any accusation against them, frequently personally taking part in the murder of their victims."

Murders were frequently preceded by tortures and acts of cruelty. Laborers at Omsk, before being shot, were flogged and beaten with butts of rifles and pieces of iron in order to extract evidence. Victims were frequently forced to dig their own graves.

BRITISH CHAPLAIN'S STORY How Odessa suffered from a systematic campaign of murder, robbery, and outrage after the first entrance of the Bolsheviki on March 13, 1918, was described by Courtier Forster, British Chaplain in Odessa, as follows:

If the brutal tyranny which the Bolsheviki have compelled the terror-ridden Russian people to accept in the name of "Freedom of Mind and Body" punishes all liberty of thought with torture, outrage, and death, freedom of body is equally travestied by unthinkable cruelties unless the term is accepted as synonymous with bestial indecency and moral depravity. In Odessa, after the first capture of the city by the Bolsheviki, my experience of what the New Civilization understands by the great phrase was certainly illuminating.

Of freedom of speech, or of the press, or of religious conviction there was none. People were arrested on every hand for any indiscreet criticism of the existing

régime. Newspapers were heavily fined, or even their publication suspended for daring to publish any opinions displeasing to the Bolshevist leaders. Services in the churches were frequently interrupted with uproar and hostile demonstrations. The only"Freedom of Mind" allowed was that which was studiously concealed, and denied all expression in speech, look, or writing. "Freedom of Body," as the Bolsheviki understand the phrase, means sickening orgies of piglike depravity.

Women and girls engaged in shopping in the lower parts of the town were seized by bands of men from the Red Army and carried off to warehouse yards and similar places, where their fate was worse than death. Indeed, in many instances they were found dead on the following morning. Orgies which defy description were of daily occurrence.

Wine shops and cellars were by degrees broken into and looted throughout the city. Free drinks from pails and buckets were given to all who cared to have them. Women returning from market in the morning were stopped and compelled to drink from pails held on high by two soldiers.

One afternoon I came away from a shop and found the streets running red with hundreds of gallons of wine pouring from the smashed vats of a great store. Numbers of Bolsheviki lay flat on the pavement, with faces in the gutter, drinking from the stream which flowed past, carrying with it the accumulated filth and refuse of the uncleansed city. This is the Bolshevist idea of Freedom of Body," coupled with the right to make the public parks and gardens the scene of indescribable obscenities, and a recognition of murder and assassination as the customary methods of dealing with those whose ideas of Freedom of Body" savor of sympathy with the worn-out and benighted standards of the effete civilization of the Allies.

MURDER OF A GENERAL

One instance of the customary method of manifesting political disapproval robbed me of a charming acquaintance of many years. General X, lived in a flat in Dom Papoodov. Since the revolution he had retired from the army and all public life, and carefully abstained from any participation in politics. His extreme discretion did not avail to save him. He was under suspicion of harboring latent hostility and repugnance toward the all-important Bolshevist conception of "Freedom of Mind and Body."

One afternoon a party of soldiers of the Red Army came to his apartment. They found the General in the act of closing his front door; he was going out to tea with some friends. The soldiers told him he was under arrest and must accompany